Monthly Archives: September 2012

Why read when you can watch and listen?

Atheism, Humanism, Personal, Physics, Science

A bunch of shameless self promotion.

Back in August I was invited to join Don McLenaghen on Radio Freethinker, the skeptical podcast of CiTR radio (the UBC radio station). Ethan was away that week, so we spent the entire hour talking about Humanism.

You can listen to that interview here (mp3).

Last week, I took a road trip to Edmonton, via Kamloops.

While in Kamloops I dropped by a meeting of the Kamloops Centre for Rational Thought and gave a (somewhat impromptu) short speech on Humanism before going into an extended discussion. I posted my brief presentation on YouTube:

Then, in Edmonton I gave my speech on communicating evidence for the Big Bang, entitled 13.7 Billion Years in 90 Seconds for my old group, the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics.

Religion isn’t the problem

Atheism, Religion

I’ve been toying around an idea in my head for a few days or weeks now and I want to flesh it out here, so bear with me.

The New Atheism is generally focused on the idea that religion is the root of all evil or religion poisons everything. It’s defined by it’s take-no-prisoners approach to religion as one of the largest sources of pain, suffering, and intellectual stagnation of the human species.

It occurs to me though that this approach may be wrong.

Not wrong in the religion is actually a good thing kind of way, but wrong in the these statements are vacuous kind of way. Let me explain.

Religion is a really poorly defined concept. It has an academic definition from sociologist Durkheim: “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred thing” and a colloquial definition “belief in, or the worship of, a god or gods.” The New Atheism is squarely aimed at the latter definition, but it’s very disingenuous to argue that it is the only or even the correct definition.

One only needs to consider Buddhism and the rational religions of the 18th century to question the idea that religion requires a belief in the supernatural.

Declaring religion is the root of all evil makes as much sense as saying politics is the root of all evil. It doesn’t actually make any sense. There are good politics and toxic politics.

What I would argue is that we need to focus our debate not on religion, but on irrational dogma and authoritarian ideologies.

The problem with religion is that far too many of them promote dangerous beliefs. The beliefs are the issue, religion is merely one conduit for these ideas.

Expanding our criticism lets us tackle issues like Communism, Fascism, Apartheid, and Libertarianism. Each comes with unquestionable core beliefs, and each can be responsible for great suffering.

I get email

Scepticism

I don’t get much email (perhaps luckily) but I still get the occasional crank.

Floride is poison to ingest and bath in.What part of” fresh, clean water” do they not understand. Mike

I’m not entirely sure what provoked this. I only have two posts that mention fluoride – an article I wrote for The Peak (which was mainly about anti-wifi hysteria) and one about skepticism in dentistry. The only other thing I can thing of is that a while ago I gave a Cafe Inquiry on the safety and efficacy of water fluoridation.

The Liberals should champion the Arrow

Canada, Liberals, Politics

There’s a story going around that a small design group is pitching a revised design of the Avro Arrow as an alternative to the Conservative’s F35s with its skyrocketing price tag.

it’s an interesting and promising idea, although its not clear that the industry is here any longer to support such a massive enterprise.

Nevertheless, this presents a golden opportunity for an up and coming federal Liberal leadership candidate to champion the idea once more. It was a Liberal government that originally introduced the Arrow, while Diefenbaker’s Conservatives killed it.

The Liberals have been without a grand vision for Canada for a while, and while this one is far from perfect, it would give them something to point to.

(Of course I realise in an ideal world such a fighter redesign should be put through an open bidding process, where the best proposal – in terms of costs, Canadian job prospects, and performance – is awarded on its merits.)